Beeshttp://www.businessinsider.com/category/bees
en-usSun, 02 Aug 2015 16:41:55 -0400Sun, 02 Aug 2015 16:41:55 -0400The latest news on Bees from Business Insiderhttp://static3.businessinsider.com/assets/images/bilogo-250x36-wide-rev.pngBusiness Insiderhttp://www.businessinsider.com
http://www.businessinsider.com/were-going-to-lose-a-lot-more-than-honey-if-bees-disappear-2015-7We're going to lose a lot more than honey if bees disappearhttp://www.businessinsider.com/were-going-to-lose-a-lot-more-than-honey-if-bees-disappear-2015-7
Thu, 16 Jul 2015 22:32:39 -0400Marianna Peso
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/55a86903371d2278018b727a-3776-2832/ap772413018926.jpg" alt="honey bees" data-mce-source="AP"></p><p>We may lose a lot more than honey if bees are unable to cope with the changing climate and increasing demand for agricultural land.</p>
<p>Your morning coffee might be a thing of the past if bees disappear, and if coffee isn’t your thing, you undoubtedly eat many of the fruit and vegetables (and chocolate) that rely on bee pollination for survival.</p>
<p>In fact, the world’s <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v521/n7552_supp/full/521S48a.html">25,000 bee species</a> are responsible for pollinating a third of the food humans eat. If we lose bees, then we risk the food security of ourselves, and all the other animals that depend on bee-pollinated crops for survival.</p>
<p>While European (managed) honey bees steal the limelight, other wild (non-honey) bees are just as important for pollinating crops and will also be impacted by climate change. Data from all over the globe suggest that <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/347/6229/1255957.abstract">both groups are in decline</a>, but since we do not have a global integrated and complete monitoring system of bee populations, these data do not describe the full extent of the problem.</p>
<p>So how well equipped are bees to survive a warming climate, and is there anything we can do to help?</p>
<h2>Bees and plants: it’s a long-term relationship</h2>
<p>Bees and flowering plants share a long evolutionary relationship and depend on each other for survival. Plants provide bees with food and habitat, while the bees feeding on pollen and nectar provide the plants with pollination.</p>
<p>To orchestrate this beautiful exchange, plants and bees rely on environmental cues (such as temperature) to coordinate their seasonal activity. However, climate change can disrupt these relationships so that <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2007.01061.x/abstract">bee activity periods will no longer time with flowering periods</a>. This will cause the bees to lose a food source and plants that fail to fruit, potentially leading to extinctions of both.</p>
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<p>Some plant-bee relationships are highly specialised. These species have evolved together so closely that a plant can depend on a single bee species in order to reproduce and vice versa.</p>
<p>Bees in specialist plant-bee relationships (such as <a href="http://www.nature.com/srep/2014/140205/srep03988/full/srep03988.html">this one</a>) are most susceptible to climate induced extinction, as the loss of one will inevitably lead to the loss of the other.</p>
<p>More generalist bee species, that can collect food from more than one plant species, may fare better than their specialist counterparts. As the climate changes, animals and plants evolve new genetic traits to adapt to the new environment.</p>
<p>However, when the environment changes at a faster pace than evolution can produce new traits, species that already have the physiological and behavioural abilities within its genetic code to cope with the changes will have an advantage.</p>
<p>A bee species that can already access more than one food source (<a href="http://www.researchgate.net/publication/23285587_Climate_change_impact_on_honey_bee_populations_and_diseases">such as the honey bee</a>) can quickly adapt to changing plant communities and survive when other specialist species cannot.</p>
<h2>‘Beehaving’ differently in the heat</h2>
<p>Bee species that can alter their behaviour to cope with high temperatures (for example by changing their activity periods to avoid the hottest part of the day) will tolerate climate stress. But these adaptive capabilities have their limits.</p>
<p>Increasing heat waves can directly kill bees by overheating them and/or melting wax-based nesting structures. <a href="http://zoologie.umh.ac.be/asef/pdf/2012_48_03_04/compact/Rasmont_&amp;_Iserbyt_2012_ASEF_48_3_4_275_280_compact.pdf">Drought can also kill bees</a>indirectly, by causing dehydration or starvation through the death of food plants.</p>
<p>Alternatively, it is possible that bees will change their range in response to changing climactic zones. As one area gets too hot, the bees can move to more tolerable climatic conditions.</p>
<p>However, a study on bumble bees conducted in North America and Europe using data spanning the last century indicate that bumble bees do not move in a way that “tracks” warming. <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/349/6244/177.abstract">Rather, they stay in the same place despite the changing climate</a>.</p>
<p><img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/55a8686f371d22ce178b707d-668-334" alt="bee" data-mce-source="The Conversation US"><br>While most of us think bees live in colonies, most of the world’s bees are actually solitary. In solitary species, female bees generally live alone in nests they’ve built, in which they raise their offspring.</p>
<p>Most bee species are also fixed in their social structures, with some species living alone while others have varying degrees of social behaviour.</p>
<p>However, a few native bee can change their social structure depending on the environment, so bees that are solitary in one set of environmental conditions are social under another.</p>
<p>These socially flexible species may have surprising responses to climate change.</p>
<p>As the weather warms and growing seasons lengthen, socially flexible bees (such as some carpenter and sweat bees) may, eventually, switch permanently from solitary behaviour to social behaviour. However this may also <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982210012844">decrease their ability</a> to adapt.</p>
<p><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/55a8685f371d2254008b72f8-668-334" alt="orchard" data-mce-source="ukgardenphotos/flickr, CC BY-ND" data-mce-caption="Leaving wildflower borders at the edge of fields can provide habitat for bees."></p>
<h2>Bee habitats are disappearing</h2>
<p>While changing the climate, humans have also made dramatic changes to Earth’s landscapes. Increasing human population and our consequent demands for space to live and grow food has meant that more of the bees’ habitat has been changed into urban and intensive agricultural areas.</p>
<p>This has resulted in loss of habitat and food sources for the bees (as well as <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/brv.12206/abstract;jsessionid=EB0275D8F0EBDC73F1BA2787BC9C5357.f02t04?userIsAuthenticated=false&amp;deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=">exposure to potentially harmful pesticides</a>). <a href="http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/274/1608/303.short">Large areas of monoculture crops fragment vital bee habitats</a> that are required for native bee food and nests. The crops may not provide a suitable food sources for certain bee species and generalist bee species such as the honey bee <a href="http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/01/18/rsbl.2009.0986.short">suffer compromised immunity when only fed one source of pollen</a>.</p>
<p>Our agricultural pollination needs cannot be met with honey bee pollination alone, as native bees are often specialised pollinators for crops honey bees cannot pollinate. For example, <a href="http://pubag.nal.usda.gov/pubag/downloadPDF.xhtml?id=48741&amp;content=PDF">the solitary alfalfa leafcutting bee pollinates alfalfa</a>, an important crop for animal feed and a plant with a trip-mechanism that honey bees avoid. Furthermore, <a href="http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1754/20122767.short">native and honey bees can work cooperatively to pollinate</a>, producing the maximum crop yield required for efficient food production.</p>
<p>The problems with taking over bee habitats can be partly resolved by leaving adequate wildflower borders between fields and in urban areas. This can link habitats and food sources (such as <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/norway-has-highway-bees-180955703/?no-ist">Norway’s bee highway</a>) so that bees can move across the entire landscape.</p>
<h2>Bees are interpretive dancers</h2>
<p>Just as plants and bees are codependent, we are dependent on their relationship for survival and must do our best to keep bees healthy, and this means more research about all aspects of the lives of wild bees including their influence on pollination. Without knowledge of how they live and their habitat needs, we cannot adequately protect them.</p>
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<p>In the case of the honey bee, we can find out what food sources it prefers by asking the bees themselves. Honey bees perform a waggle dance to communicate the direction and distance of their preferred food source, and how much they like it (<a href="http://jeb.biologists.org/content/212/2/163.short">a honey bee dance is more “vigorous” when they really value a food source</a>).</p>
<p>By <a href="http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fevo.2015.00044/full">interpreting the dance</a> of the honey bee workers, and identifying the pollen on their legs to determine which plant they are dancing about, we can find out where and when they like to forage. This information on foraging behaviour can also be used as an indicator of the biodiversity in the area, and whether the landscape is healthy for bees.</p>
<p>The knowledge we gain from the bees can be used to help conserve them, and in turn, conserve ourselves.</p>
<p><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/imageundefined" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1"></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/were-going-to-lose-a-lot-more-than-honey-if-bees-disappear-2015-7#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/why-too-much-stress-is-bad-for-you-2015-6">5 horrible things that happen to your body when you're stressed</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/global-warming-is-putting-bumblebees-in-a-climate-vise-2015-7Global warming is putting bumblebees in a ‘climate vise’http://www.businessinsider.com/global-warming-is-putting-bumblebees-in-a-climate-vise-2015-7
Thu, 09 Jul 2015 21:19:00 -0400Will Dunham
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><img style="float:right;" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/559f1d4d69bedd8e43014807-1200-924/bumblebees.jpg" border="0" alt="bumblebees">WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Global warming is shrinking the terrain where bumblebees live in North America and Europe, with these vital pollinators departing the southernmost and hottest parts of their ranges while failing to move north into cooler climes, scientists say.</span></p>
<p>Their study, published on Thursday, used records from 1901 to 2010 to track 67 bumblebee species, finding that the insects have surrendered about 185 miles (300 km) from the southern end of the regions they called home on both continents.</p>
<p>The researchers found no evidence pesticide use or habitat destruction were to blame, instead implicating rising temperatures recorded since climate change began accelerating in the 1970s.</p>
<p>"This is the 'climate vise,'" said University of Ottawa biologist Jeremy Kerr, with the bumblebees "stuck at the northern edges of ranges while the southern edges are crushed inward and those populations are lost."</p>
<p>"Bumblebees are declining incredibly fast and the fingerprints of human-caused climate change are all over these changes," Kerr added. "Even more incredibly to us, these effects are often nearly identical across continents, occurring at the same pace in both Europe and North America."</p>
<p>The steep decline of bumblebees on a continental scale threatens food security and the economic viability of some crops, the researchers said. Bumblebees pollinate numerous plants that provide food for people and wildlife.</p>
<p>"Wild bumble bees are important pollinators of agricultural crops such as blueberry, apple, pumpkin and tomato, and declines in this ecosystem service of pollination could lead to lower crop yields and higher food costs, with consequences for both our food supply and the economy," University of Vermont biologist Leif Richardson said.</p>
<p>Bumblebees are losing the southernmost portion of their ranges amid rising temperatures, but unlike other species they have not moved further north into more hospitable territory.</p>
<p>"They are failing to colonize newly available environments created by this warming. Climate change may be making things too hot for them in the south, but warming conditions are not pulling them north as we would expect," University of Calgary ecologist Paul Galpern said.</p>
<p>Kerr said dramatic action should be considered: a proposal called "assisted migration" involving a large-scale relocation of bee populations into new areas where they might thrive.</p>
<p>"More generally, losing pollinators is a sign that we are playing dangerously with life-support systems we can't do without," Kerr added. "That is an experiment we should never have started."</p>
<p>The study appears in the journal Science.&nbsp;</p>
<p>(Editing by Eric Walsh)</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/global-warming-is-putting-bumblebees-in-a-climate-vise-2015-7#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/university-miami-net-zero-water-system-college-dorms-2015-5">California could learn a few things about water conservation from this college dorm in Florida</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-oslo-creates-worlds-first-highway-to-protect-endangered-bees-2015-6Norway has created the world's first 'highway' to protect endangered beeshttp://www.businessinsider.com/afp-oslo-creates-worlds-first-highway-to-protect-endangered-bees-2015-6
Thu, 25 Jun 2015 00:27:33 -0400Pierre-Henry Deshayes
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/558d1e6969bedd7b54daa49b-655-491/oslo-bee-highway.jpg" border="0" alt="oslo bee highway"></p><p>Oslo (AFP) - From flower emblazoned cemeteries to rooftop gardens and balconies, Norway's capital Oslo is creating a "bee highway" to protect endangered pollinators essential to food production.&nbsp;</p>
<p>"We are constantly reshaping our environment to meet our needs, forgetting that other species also live in it," Agnes Lyche Melvaer, head of the Bybi, an environmental group supporting urban bees, which is leading the project.&nbsp;</p>
<p>"To correct that we need to return places to them to live and feed," she explained, sitting on a bench in a lush city centre square bursting with early Nordic summer growth.</p>
<p>With its sunflowers, marigolds and other nectar-bearing flowers planted by bee-loving locals and school children, Abel's Garden was until recently covered only in grass but is now a floral "feeding station" for bees.</p>
<p>Oslo's "bee highway" aims to give the insects a safe passage through the city, lined with relays providing food a shelter -- the first such system in the world, according to the organisers.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Participants in the project -- state bodies, companies, associations and private individuals -- are invited to post their contribution on a website www.polli.no, which maps out the bees' route across the city.&nbsp;</p>
<h3><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Real cost of honey pot $182,000</span></h3>
<p>On the twelfth floor of an ultra modern office block in the capital's chic business district on the edge of Oslo fjord, a major accountancy firm has covered parts of its terrace in brightly flowering Sedum plants and two bee hives.&nbsp;</p>
<p><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/558d1ee469bedd4951daa49d-1200-800/rtxyyb6.jpg" border="0" alt="beehive"></p>
<p>It houses some 45,000 worker bees, busily unaware of their smart-suited office counterparts enjoying their lunch just metres away.&nbsp;</p>
<p>"One should see it as a sign that companies&nbsp;are also taking responsibility for preserving biodiversity," said accountant and bee-keeping enthusiast Marie Skjelbred.</p>
<p>She convinced her employer to co-finance the project to the tune of 400,000 kroner ($51,348, 46,000 euros) along with the owners of the building.&nbsp;</p>
<p>"The workers live about 60 days," she explained with a glint in her eye.&nbsp;</p>
<p>"During their lives, they don't produce more than a spoon of honey," she added, before turning to her accountancy skills to do the maths.&nbsp;</p>
<p>"If we did their job, paid at the minimum wage, a pot of honey would cost $182,000."&nbsp;</p>
<p>Although Norwegian bees may not be as seriously threatened by intensive agriculture and pesticides as bees in the US or other European countries, a third of the country's 200 wild bee species are nonetheless considered endangered.&nbsp;</p>
<p>And that is cause for concern for humans since 30 to 40 percent of food production requires pollination, a service provided for free by the insects which according to a 2005 Franco-German study is worth an estimated 153 billion euros.&nbsp;</p>
<h3><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Butterfly effect</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><br></span></h3>
<p>Christian Steel at the Norwegian Biodiversity Network, which brings together the country's professional and amateur biologists, supports the initiative but condemns the "short term policies" of Norwegian authorities.&nbsp;</p>
<p>"The government seems to hide behind these kinds of private initiatives, while pursuing in parallel a policy of promoting intensive agriculture which leads to the death of many bees," he lamented.&nbsp;</p>
<p>"Agriculture is completely dependent on pollinators to maintain food production just as insects are dependent on diverse agriculture to survive. It's a mutual dependence," he added.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The mass destruction of bee populations around the world has already forced farmers in the Chinese province of Sichuan to pollinate plants by hand, and in the US some farmers are left with no choice but to rent hives transported cross-country by truck to pollinate crops.&nbsp;</p>
<p>But in Abel's Garden in Oslo, Agnes Lyche Melvaer says she has faith in the "butterfly effect".&nbsp;</p>
<p>"If we manage to solve a global problem locally it's conceivable that this local solution will work elsewhere too."</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/explore-oslo-like-a-local-2015-3#ixzz3e9z9HnGZ" >10 ways to explore Oslo like a local</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-oslo-creates-worlds-first-highway-to-protect-endangered-bees-2015-6#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-sachs-anti-vaccine-fatal-flaw-vaxxers-california-2015-6">Watch Jeff Sachs destroy the anti-vaccine movement in under two minutes</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/the-animals-most-likely-to-kill-americans-2015-6The animals most likely to kill Americanshttp://www.businessinsider.com/the-animals-most-likely-to-kill-americans-2015-6
Fri, 19 Jun 2015 13:54:57 -0400Matthew Speiser
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/5582e44beab8eac97399268e-1200-1091/cows-26.jpg" border="0" alt="cows"></p><p>Two shark attacks in North Carolina <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/north-carolina-shark-attacks-witness-says-it-was-scene-jaws-n375591" target="_blank">this weekend</a> were a solemn reminder that animals are not always our friends. In fact, some of them are ruthless predators.</p>
<p>So which animals kill the most Americans?</p>
<h3><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/06/16/chart-the-animals-that-are-most-likely-to-kill-you-this-summer/?postshare=7131434543687940" target="_blank">Check out the Washington Post's chart here »</a></h3>
<p><strong>Shark attacks</strong> claim one American life per year on average. In April, a shark <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/a-shark-killed-a-65-year-old-woman-in-maui-2015-4" target="_blank">killed a 65-year old </a>woman off the coast of Maui.</p>
<p><strong>Alligators and bears</strong> also average one kill per year. Last September, a 22-year old Rutgers student&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/black-bear-kills-rutgers-student-in-new-jersey-2014-9" target="_blank">lost his life</a>&nbsp;when he was mauled to death by a black bear in New Jersey.</p>
<p><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/54abb1cdecad04af7d6e9a2f-1200-800/shutterstock_78711190.jpg" border="0" alt="Angry Bear"></p>
<p><strong>Venomous snakes and lizards</strong> claim the lives of six Americans each year. In May, a 37-year old Missouri man who was wading through a river in the town of Nixa was bitten on both legs by a venomous snake and died in the hospital the next day,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/05/28/missouri-man-reportedly-dies-snake-bite/28061495/" target="_blank">USA Today reported</a>.<span>&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><strong>Spiders</strong> kill seven Americans every year. A boy in Alabama died last November after being bitten by a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2014/11/brown_recluse_spider-bite_deat.html" target="_blank">rare brown recluse spider</a>.<span style="background-color: #ffff00;"><br></span></p>
<p><strong>Non-venomous arthropods</strong> (mosquitoes, ticks, lice, mites) kill nine Americans every year. The CDC is currently investigating a new strain of virus <span>&nbsp;dubbed as "Bourbon"&nbsp;</span>that may be carried by ticks after a Kansas man died from a tick bite in February, <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-20/newly-found-virus-linked-to-kansas-man-s-death-after-tick-bite" target="_blank">according to Bloomberg</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Cows</strong> kill 20 Americans every year on average. Yes, cows are twenty times more lethal than sharks, bears, or alligators. The Post points out that most of these deaths are attributed to workplace accidents involving farmhands. As the CDC notes, <span>"large livestock are powerful, quick, protective of their territory and offspring, and especially unpredictable during breeding and birthing periods."</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><strong>Dogs</strong>, also known as man's best friend, kill man 28 times each year in America. In May, the <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-dog-kills-boy-20150526-story.html" target="_blank">Chicago Tribune reported</a> a tragic story in which a dog bit a 5-year old boy in the throat. He died shortly thereafter.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/54e773bc6da8116d5088527f-1024-683/4754412845_b7f16e78fb_b.jpg" border="0" alt="russian stray dogs in the forest evolution"><br></span></p>
<p>The Post's chart shows&nbsp;<strong>mammals</strong>, including horses, pigs, and deer, claim the lives of 52 Americans each year on average. But the most deadly animals for Americans are also some of the smallest.</p>
<p><strong>Bees, hornets, and wasps</strong>&nbsp;kill 58 Americans every year on average, mostly by&nbsp;anaphylactic shock after a sting. As recently as last week, a 65-year old man in Texas was killed after a swarm of bees attacked him while he was mowing his neighbors lawn. <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/06/09/bee-attack-death/28771365/" target="_blank">According to USA Today</a>, the man had bumped into a shed that a beehive was attached to, causing a part of the hive to fall off and a cloud of bees to fly out.</p>
<p>So there you have it — the dogs you might encounter on a daily basis are more likely to kill you than sharks or bears. And you may never look at cows the same way again.</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/author/matthew-speiser#ixzz3dQaoHOuU" >Startling photos show dozens of zoo animals roaming around Georgian city after massive flood </a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-animals-most-likely-to-kill-americans-2015-6#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/goat-killing-muslim-slaughterhouse-2015-1">A Passionate Argument For Killing Animals You Eat With Your Own Hands</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/r-man-survives-500-to-1000-stings-by-swarming-arizona-bees-2015-6A guy in Arizona got stung 500 to 1,000 times by an 'unbelievable' swarm of bees and survivedhttp://www.businessinsider.com/r-man-survives-500-to-1000-stings-by-swarming-arizona-bees-2015-6
Fri, 12 Jun 2015 23:02:00 -0400David Schwartz
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/557b9c3a69bedd13508d138f-1200-924/bees-12.jpg" border="0" alt="bees">PHOENIX (Reuters) - A man is lucky to be alive after having been stung between 500 and 1,000 times by tens of thousands of swarming bees near Kingman in northwestern Arizona on Friday, authorities said.</span></p>
<p>The unidentified man was in stable condition at Kingman Regional Medical Center following the attack after he apparently disturbed a large hive in the backyard of a home, said Mohave County sheriff’s spokeswoman Leslie DeSantis.</p>
<p>"The number of bees in the shed was unbelievable," DeSantis said. "The deputy who arrived said it was it was like something you’d see in the movies. It was just amazing."</p>
<p>Authorities said the man was working on the property when he was stung and ran to his vehicle, getting help from two passersby who were also stung. They were not hospitalized.</p>
<p>A beekeeper called to the scene was also stung 23 times. He told authorities it would probably take several days to fully contain the bees.</p>
<p>Authorities are warning residents of the area to keep pets indoors, avoid walking nearby, and drive through with car windows closed.</p>
<p>The attack took place at a golf-course community with large-lot homes in Valle Vista, about 14 miles (23 km) northeast of Kingman and 206 miles (332 km) northwest of Phoenix.</p>
<p>(Editing by Sharon Bernstein and Clarence Fernandez)</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/r-man-survives-500-to-1000-stings-by-swarming-arizona-bees-2015-6#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/13-year-old-invents-solar-panel-tree-energy-sun-science-fair-2015-4">This 13-year-old found the math formula for capturing the sun's energy</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/killer-bees-are-menacing-arizona-2015-6Dog-killing bees are menacing Arizona — here's what you need to knowhttp://www.businessinsider.com/killer-bees-are-menacing-arizona-2015-6
Fri, 12 Jun 2015 15:05:30 -0400YARA BISHARA
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/531dd0ceeab8eac5296f692e-600-/killer-bees.jpg" border="0" alt="Killer bees" width="600"></p><p>PHOENIX (AP) — A particularly aggressive strain of honeybee has been menacing parts of Arizona in recent weeks, with some people getting stung so many times that they've been hospitalized.</p>
<p>In the past week alone, an 84-year-old man from the Tucson area was stung more than 2,000 times in his backyard. Three dogs have been killed. And beekeepers report an increase in calls to remove hives and bee swarms.</p>
<p>Some answers to common questions about the bee attacks:</p>
<h3>WHAT KIND OF BEES ARE ATTACKING?</h3>
<p>Experts point to the Africanized honeybee, also known as the killer bee, which is a cross-breed between the European honeybee and the African honeybee, according to Reed Booth, who runs a bee-removal business in Bisbee, in southern Arizona.</p>
<p>The killer bee is the result of experiments in Brazil decades ago, and the insects migrated to the U.S. The bees are more prevalent in warm Southwestern states such as Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. If their hives are disrupted, they become especially aggressive.</p>
<h3>WHAT IS A NORMAL BEE SEASON?</h3>
<p>In a normal year, bee season runs from mid-March through late October, but it often depends on the weather.</p>
<p>"I normally get five to 10 calls a day for bee removal, and now you're getting 30 to 60 every day," Booth said.</p>
<p>The Phoenix Fire Department has responded to 58 bee calls in the metropolitan area since the start of 2014, including 17 this year, Capt. Aaron Ernsberger said.</p>
<p>Elaine Stacey, who co-owns a bee-removal service in Phoenix, has also noticed an increase in Africanized honeybees in Arizona, especially in the spring.</p>
<p>Booth could not pinpoint an exact reason for the increase, but he believes the change is due to the wet, warm winter Arizona experienced this year.</p>
<h3>WHAT CAUSES THEM TO ATTACK?</h3>
<p>The bees are constantly on guard for possible threats to the hive. They could perceive the color of a shirt or the scent of cologne as threatening, Booth said. It doesn't take much to provoke them.</p>
<p>"They hate any movement, noise, or vibration," Booth said. "They hate everything."</p>
<p>Booth said he has also witnessed a behavioral shift in the Africanized honeybee, with their aggressiveness going "through the roof."</p>
<h3>HOW FEROCIOUS ARE THE BEES?</h3>
<p>An 84-year-old Oro Valley man survived after being stung by more than 2,000 bees in his backyard. Booth said 500 stings are the equivalent of one rattlesnake bite.</p>
<p>In Arizona, signs along popular hiking trails warn about the dangers of bee hives. Spring training baseball games are sometimes disrupted by swarms of bees, and pets sometimes fall victim to the attacks.</p>
<p>A woman driving through the Phoenix suburb of Peoria this week was swarmed by bees that were disturbed by a landscaping crew. Her dog was killed. A swarm also attacked a person in the Prescott area and killed two other dogs this week.</p>
<p>The sizes of the hives and swarms vary, but Booth said an average hive usually has 40,000 to 60,000 bees.</p>
<h3>WHAT CAN PEOPLE DO?</h3>
<p>Phoenix fire officials recommend that anyone who encounters bees leave the area, call 911 and notify a beekeeper.</p>
<p>Additionally, people who are allergic to bees should be sure to carry medicine with them, Ersnberger said.</p>
<p>"If you see a bee, just don't go near it," Booth said.</p>
<p>Health officials also advise people who disrupt a beehive to cover their heads, run away and take shelter and not to flail their arms.</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/killer-bees-are-menacing-arizona-2015-6#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/animal-empathy-testing-rats-experiment-chocolate-2015-5">Researchers tested a rat’s empathy by giving it a choice between chocolate and a drowning friend</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-bees-are-sick-of-humans-but-man-will-feel-the-sting-2015-6South Africa's normally hardy bees are now under siegehttp://www.businessinsider.com/afp-bees-are-sick-of-humans-but-man-will-feel-the-sting-2015-6
Mon, 08 Jun 2015 01:15:00 -0400Stephanie Findlay
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/5575260e5afbd313268b4567-800/afp-bees-are-sick-of-humans-but-man-will-feel-the-sting.jpg" border="0" alt="A beekeeper inspects a brood frame inside a bee hive suspected of having been infected with the foulbrood bacterial disease on a farm near Durbanville, about 50 km from Cape Town"></p><p>Pretoria (AFP) - In a worrying development which could threaten food production, South Africa's traditionally tough honey bees -- which had been resistant to disease -- are now getting "sick of humans", with the population of the crucial pollinators collapsing, experts say.</p>
<p>The seriousness of the global problem was highlighted when US President Barack Obama announced a plan last month to make millions of acres (hectares) of land more bee-friendly.</p>
<p>Loss of habitat, the increasing use of pesticides and growing vulnerability to disease are blamed by many critics for the plight of the honey bees.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The environmental group Greenpeace, which has launched a campaign to save the insects, says that 70 out of the top 100 human food crops, which supply about 90 percent of the world's nutrition, are pollinated by bees.</p>
<p>In South Africa, an outbreak of the lethal bacterial disease foulbrood is spreading rapidly for the first time in recent history, says Mike Allsopp, honey bee specialist at the Agricultural Research Council in Stellenbosch in the Western Cape province.&nbsp;</p>
<p>"It's exactly the same as around the world, the bees are sick of humans and the pressures and the stresses humans are putting on them," said Allsopp.</p>
<p>"In the past they were less vulnerable because they weren't stressed by intensive bee-keeping and pesticides and pollution."&nbsp;</p>
<p>The foulbrood hitting South Africa is the American strain of the disease, he said. The country's bees have previously coped with the European version.</p>
<p>The fear is that the disease could spread north through Africa, where hundreds of thousands of people work in small-scale bee farming, Allsopp said.</p>
<p>"It is a ticking time bomb. Every colony that I've looked at that has clinical foulbrood has died, and we're not seeing colonies recover."&nbsp;</p>
<p>When honey bee farmer Brendan Ashley-Cooper discovered foulbrood in his colonies in 2009, he knew the worst was yet to come. &nbsp;</p>
<p>"We thought we were going to have this major explosion of foulbrood," said Ashley-Cooper, a 44-year-old based in Cape Town. "I didn't know what to do, I didn't know what the extent of it was. I was just worried about the bees."</p>
<p>Six years later, the nightmare has come true for the third-generation beekeeper as hives die off.</p>
<p>The state of South Africa's bees has never been as bad as it is now, he says.</p>
<h3>- Bees under siege -</h3>
<p>Foulbrood attacks the bee larvae, leading to the collapse of the colony. It is spread when bees raid the dead colony, bringing back spore-infected honey to their colony, or by the importation of contaminated bee products.</p>
<p>While North America and Europe have battled foulbrood for centuries, South Africa's bees have stayed healthy -- a resilience attributed to the country's diverse bee population, which has naturally fought off disease and pests in the past, as well as strict regulations that require any imported bee products to be irradiated.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Yet today the hardy South African bees are under siege. "Foulbrood has spread massively in the last five months, it has now spread over a 500 by 400-kilometre (about 300 by 250-mile) area where most beekeeping operations are infected," said Allsopp.</p>
<p>"It is growing rapidly and I can think of no reason why it will stop unless human intervention stops it or controls it."&nbsp;</p>
<p>The stakes are too high for bee keepers to ignore, said Allsopp. "We cannot afford to lose our bee population, not because of the losses of honey, but because we have 20 billion rands ($1.6 billion) worth of commercial agriculture that requires bee pollination."</p>
<p>Faced with the realisation that the bees can't adapt to the foulbrood threat fast enough to sustain agricultural pollination, South African officials say that they are in talks to introduce stiffer regulations to tackle foulbrood.&nbsp;</p>
<p>"There is a team that is currently working on an action programme that will be between industry and the department that will be announced in the next few weeks," said director of agriculture Mooketsa Ramasodi.</p>
<p>The government plans to clamp down on the registration of beekeepers, heighten awareness of the issue, and enforce beekeeping management measures -- such as checking the larvae regularly -- which are aimed at identifying the disease before it kills the colony, he said.</p>
<p>South Africa would use antibiotics to treat hives -- a controversial method -- only as a "last option", Ramasodi said.</p>
<p>Ashley-Cooper worries that the government action may be too little too late for an industry that has a laissez-faire approach to beekeeping.&nbsp;</p>
<p>In general, South African bee keepers leave the bees to fend for themselves, confident that they will eventually recover, as they have always done in the past.</p>
<p>"It's really a beekeeper issue, it's about beekeeper education and becoming modern beekeepers," said Ashley-Cooper. "We are keeping bees like our grandparents did 150 years ago, there's huge room for improvement."&nbsp;</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-bees-are-sick-of-humans-but-man-will-feel-the-sting-2015-6#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/what-happens-after-black-widow-spider-bite-poison-2015-4">Here's what happens when you get bitten by a black widow</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/invasive-species-threaten-north-american-bumble-bees-2015-5Our bumble bees are under attack by European invadershttp://www.businessinsider.com/invasive-species-threaten-north-american-bumble-bees-2015-5
Wed, 27 May 2015 16:34:00 -0400Kelsey K Graham
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/533bf6bb6bb3f749110a1aad-1200-924/bees-5.jpg" border="0" alt="bees"></p><p>As global commerce grows, the movement of goods is occurring at ever-faster rates. And with increased global trade comes the spread of non-native species.</p>
<p>This includes invasive insects that are making life difficult for domestic bees.</p>
<p>Non-native species get introduced both intentionally and accidentally. However they migrate, though, their spread can lead to devastating results.</p>
<p>Non-native species can dramatically reshape their invaded habitats and disrupt the interactions between native species.</p>
<p>After direct habitat loss, <a href="http://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/index.shtml">invasive species</a> are the second greatest threat to biodiversity. <a href="http://www.globalissues.org/article/170/why-is-biodiversity-important-who-cares#WhyisBiodiversityImportant">Biodiversity</a> is crucial to a healthy ecosystem, providing us services such as food, the natural resources that sustain our current lifestyle, and the building blocks of medicines.</p>
<p>Invasive species come in all forms – plants, animals and microbes – but all share common traits: they are non-native, they are increasing in prevalence, and they negatively affect native species.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollinators/animals/bees.shtml">Native bees</a> in North America are declining drastically. Habitat loss is the number one reason for bee decline, with pesticide use, invasive species, and climate change also playing a major role. With the growth of cities and farms, habitat suitable for our native bees shrinks. And with competition and habitat degradation from invasive species, suitable habitat becomes even less.</p>
<p>We depend on native bees, like our humble <a href="http://www.xerces.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/bumble-bee-conservation-factsheet.pdf">bumble bees</a> (<em>Bombus</em> spp.), to pollinate native flowers and crops. Bumble bees pollinate tomatoes, peppers, blueberries and many more of our favorite food items. Honey bees, which are widely used in agriculture and are suffering from <a href="http://www2.epa.gov/pollinator-protection/colony-collapse-disorder">colony collapse disorder</a>, are a non-native species, and can't replace the pollination services provided by native bees such as bumble bees.</p>
<p>But one invasive species in particular is threatening the livelihood of bumble bees.</p>
<p><img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/5566265e69bedd88798a8426-1024-512/bumble-bee-flowers-2.jpg" border="0" alt="bumble bee flowers"></p>
<h2>New bee on the block</h2>
<p>The European wool-carder bee was first discovered in North America <a href="http://oregonstate.edu/dept/nurspest/European_wool_carder_bee.html">in 1963</a> near Ithaca, New York, and since then, its impact has been felt from coast to coast. Wool-carder bees get their name from the nest building behavior of the female bees. Females collect plant hairs, called trichomes, by cutting them with their mandibles. The up-and-down motion they use during trichome collection to cut the hair-like fibers and ball them up is reminiscent of carding wool.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.experiment.com/beebattles">My research</a> has shown that carding behavior induces chemical changes in the plant similar to what occurs when insects eat plants. These chemical changes signal other wool-carder bees, attracting them to the plant, which causes further damage.</p>
<p>In addition to damaging plants, female wool-carder bees compete with our native bees for flowers. Bees depend on nectar and pollen from flowers for food, and increased competition from invasive species raises concerns over the future of our native bees.</p>
<p>But the behavior of male wool-carder bees appears even more sinister. Males aggressively defend flower patches in order to attract mates. Males use evolved weapons on the base of their abdomen to attack any interloper who isn't a potential mate, often causing severe injury or even death to the attacked bee. By decreasing competition for flowers, the male wool-carder bee hopes to entice more female wool-carder bees to visit his patch, thus increasing his chances of mating.</p>
<p><img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/556628146bb3f7dc76abd0cf-1024-768/wool carder bee.jpg" border="0" alt="wool carder bee"></p>
<p>Of all our native bees, bumble bees (<em>Bombus</em> spp.) receive the brunt of attacks from male wool-carder bees. Therefore, my research focuses on the impact of these attacks on bumble bee well-being. My preliminary research shows that bumble bees avoid foraging for nectar and pollen in areas with wool-carder bees - likely to avoid attack. Because they stay away from areas defended by wool-carder bees, the number of flowers available to bumble bees decreases.</p>
<p>As bumble bees are already facing a shortage of flowers due to habitat loss, this additional restriction on flower availability is causing serious concern about the sustainability of local bumble bee populations. Because the population of wool-carder bees is growing, my <a href="https://experiment.com/projects/aixqchktadmqekrxiswl">current research</a> is trying to determine the extent of the negative impact they are having on our precious native pollinators.</p>
<p>Native pollinators, such as bumble bees, cannot easily be replaced by other species. This is because our native bees perform a special form of pollination, <a href="http://www.anneleonard.com/buzz-pollination">buzz pollination</a>, where they use a unique vibration pattern to shake loose pollen from flowers. Many of our native crops, such as tomatoes and blueberries, need buzz pollination for efficient pollen transfer. So for the health and well-being of our native plants, we must care for our native bees.</p>
<h2>So what can we do?</h2>
<p>There are a number of <a href="http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollinators/friendlypractices.shtml">pollinator-friendly</a> actions each of us can take.</p>
<ol>
<li>
<p><strong>Plant native wildflowers</strong> – Ornamental non-native plants are often easy choices for the garden, but they promote the spread of invasive species such as the wool-carder bee, and often go unvisited by our native bees. So while you may think you are helping the bees by planting flowers, make sure that you are planting flowers that our native bees will actually visit. Native wildflowers help mitigate the effects of urbanization on our native bees by increasing the availability of food in an otherwise challenging urban environment.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>Opt for a more natural yard</strong> – Treating our yards with herbicides and cutting the grass very short can lead to a perfectly manicured lawn, but at what cost? Lawns with no flowers are food deserts to our bees. Allowing wildflowers such as clover to blossom in your yard provides much-needed resources for our native bees. If you absolutely can't give up the manicured look of your lawn, opt for a wildflower garden at the perimeter of the yard instead. The bees will thank you!</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>Buy organic</strong> – Pesticides, particularly <a href="http://www.xerces.org/neonicotinoids-and-bees/">neonicotinoids</a>, have devastating effects on bees, and are linked to the decline of both bumble bees and other bee species worldwide. Lessen your pesticide footprint by buying organic produce when you can.</p>
</li>
</ol><hr>
<p><em>To read more about bees and pollinators, see:</em></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://theconversation.com/flower-pharmacies-help-bees-fight-parasites-37614">Flower pharmacies help bees fight parasites</a></li>
<li><a href="https://theconversation.com/bee-crisis-global-warming-will-cause-onward-march-of-exotic-gut-parasite-34716">Bee crisis: global warming will cause onward march of exotic gut parasite</a></li>
</ul>
<p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.edu.au/content/40620/count.gif" border="0" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1"></p>
<p><a href="http://theconversation.com/profiles/kelsey-k-graham-163815">Kelsey K Graham</a> is PhD Candidate in Behavioral Ecology at <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/tufts-university">Tufts University </a>.</p>
<p>This article was originally published on <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a>. Read the <a href="http://theconversation.com/bee-battles-why-our-native-pollinators-are-losing-the-war-40620">original article</a>.</p><p><strong>UP NEXT:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-is-finally-doing-something-to-slow-a-catastrophic-honey-bee-decline-2015-4" >The US is finally doing something to slow a catastrophic honey bee decline</a></strong></p>
<p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/a-popular-pesticide-is-harming-wild-bees-2015-4" >A popular pesticide seems to be harming wild bees</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/invasive-species-threaten-north-american-bumble-bees-2015-5#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/endangered-pygmy-hippo-birth-baby-uk-2015-1">This Rare Baby Pygmy Hippo Is Latest Hope For An Endangered Species</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/a-us-workforce-that-produces-15-billion-of-economic-value-each-year-is-panicking-2015-5A US workforce that produces $15 billion of economic value each year is panickinghttp://www.businessinsider.com/a-us-workforce-that-produces-15-billion-of-economic-value-each-year-is-panicking-2015-5
Fri, 22 May 2015 08:23:00 -0400
<p><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/555355baeab8eaa568fda37e-1200-858/167525023.jpg" border="0" alt="167525023"></p><p>A crucial agricultural workforce in the United States that produces some $15 billion worth of economic value every year, according to the Obama administration, has been struck by alarming losses recently, frightening advocates and demanding attention from Washington. Yes, the country's bees are in trouble.</p>
<p>President Obama has a plan to deal with the massive number of bee deaths. But this might be a problem that biotechnology will ultimately have to solve.</p>
<p><img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/519a8f9a6bb3f7c005000001-1200-800/ap772413018926.jpg" border="0" alt="honey bees">About 42 percent of honeybee colonies died over the past year, according to a new survey. Though that's bad, it's not the worst in the past decade. Perhaps some reduction in bee numbers is to be expected as a growing and more prosperous human population adapts land to its own uses. But beekeepers must split surviving colonies to make up for bee deaths, straining insects and making the business increasingly difficult and expensive.</p>
<p>Government experts blame a complex set of factors. The 1987 arrival of the varroa destructor mite, which feeds on honeybee blood, appears to have contributed, along with disease, pesticide use and a reduction in the type and variety of forage that bees need.</p>
<p>The Obama administration wants to curtail all of these factors, lowering the rate of hive loss to no more than 15 percent within a decade, which would be economically sustainable for the bee industry. Top on the list is altering public and private lands — in national parks, roadside strips, building complexes, even the White House South Lawn — to create 7&nbsp;million acres of suitable pollinator habitat. This involves, among other things, identifying plants that provide nutrition for honeybees in hopes of encouraging their cultivation.</p>
<p>That would help, and Congress should provide the necessary funds. But to many advocates, those sorts of measures don't face up to what they see as the real problem: a class of insecticides known as neonicotinoids. The Environmental Protection Agency already has created rules restricting neonicotinoid use when bees are brought in to pollinate areas.</p>
<p>But anti-pesticide activists insist that persistent low-level exposure to neonicotinoids can harm bees, too. Plants absorb the pesticides even when bees aren't around, they say, which results in toxic pollen and nectar; even if contaminated bees don't die, these compounds can interfere with bees' capability to communicate, fly and navigate.</p>
<p><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/531dd0cb69bedd6b134bbd0c-1000-667/shutterstock_75635692.jpg" border="0" alt="Killer bees">The European Union has put a moratorium on neonicotinoid use. The EPA is being more cautious. The agency isn't approving more uses for neonicotinoids, but it's also not taking products off the market yet, instead just limiting their application.</p>
<p>T<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">he agency says that the serious scientific work establishing the risk of low-level neonicotinoid exposure to bees is only just being done. Besides, the Obama administration's strategy notes, the goal is to "balance the unintended consequences of chemical exposure with the need for pest control."</span></p>
<p>In the end, that balance might be best achieved with new biotechnology: compounds and plants that target unwanted species while leaving others alone. As with many vexing environmental and resource challenges, governments and the public must be open to the promise of these sorts of innovations to improve both the environment and human welfare.</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/a-us-workforce-that-produces-15-billion-of-economic-value-each-year-is-panicking-2015-5#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/what-happens-after-black-widow-spider-bite-poison-2015-4">Here's what happens when you get bitten by a black widow</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-government-is-trying-to-save-the-declining-honeybee-population-2015-5The US government is trying to save the declining honeybee populationhttp://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-government-is-trying-to-save-the-declining-honeybee-population-2015-5
Tue, 19 May 2015 08:50:29 -0400Seth Borenstein
<p><span style="color: #000000;"><img style="float:right;" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/551e853569bedd8953a43757-1200-858/ap673225430824.jpg" border="0" alt="honey bee">The federal government hopes to reverse America's declining honeybee and monarch butterfly populations by making more federal land bee-friendly, spending more money on research and considering the use of less pesticides.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">Scientists say&nbsp;bees&nbsp;— crucial to pollinate many crops — have been hurt by a combination of&nbsp;declining&nbsp;nutrition, mites, disease, and pesticides. The federal&nbsp;plan&nbsp;is an "all hands on deck" strategy that calls on everyone from federal bureaucrats to citizens to do what they can to save&nbsp;bees, which provide more than $15 billion in value to the U.S. economy, according to White House science adviser John Holdren.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">"Pollinators are struggling," Holdren said in a blog post, citing a new federal survey that found beekeepers lost more than 40 percent of their colonies last year, although they later recovered by dividing surviving hives. He also said the number of monarch butterflies that spend the winter in Mexico's forests is down by 90 percent or more over the past two decades, so the U.S. government is working with Mexico to expand monarch habitat in the southern part of that country.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">The&nbsp;plan&nbsp;calls for restoring 7 million acres of&nbsp;bee&nbsp;habitat in the next five years. Numerous federal agencies will have to find ways to grow plants on federal lands that are more varied and better for&nbsp;bees&nbsp;to eat because scientists have worried that large land tracts that grow only one crop have hurt&nbsp;bee&nbsp;nutrition.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">The&nbsp;plan&nbsp;is not just for the Department of Interior, which has vast areas of land under its control. Agencies that wouldn't normally be thought of, such as Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Transportation, will have to include bee-friendly landscaping on their properties and in grant-making.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">That part of the&nbsp;bee&nbsp;plan&nbsp;got praise from scientists who study&nbsp;bees.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">"Here, we can do a lot for&nbsp;bees, and other pollinators," University of Maryland entomology professor Dennis vanEnglesdorp, who led the federal&nbsp;bee&nbsp;study that found last year's large loss. "This I think is something to get excited and hopeful about. There is really only one hope for&nbsp;bees&nbsp;and it's to make sure they spend a good part of the year in safe healthy environments. The apparent scarcity of these areas is what's worrying. This could change that."</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;"><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/555b2f0eeab8ea1a60891f70-1200-600/honey-bees-3.jpg" border="0" alt="honey bees"><br></span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">University of Montana&nbsp;bee&nbsp;expert Jerry Bromenshenk said the effort shows the federal government finally recognizes that land use is key with&nbsp;bees.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">"From my perspective, it's a wake-up call," Bromenshenk wrote in an email. "Pollinators need safe havens, with adequate quantities of high-quality resources for food and habitat, relatively free from toxic chemicals, and that includes pollutants as well as pesticides and other agricultural chemicals."</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">The administration&nbsp;proposes&nbsp;spending $82.5 million on honeybee research in the upcoming budget year, up $34 million from now.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">The Environmental Protection Agency will step up studies into the safety of widely used neonicotinoid pesticides, which have been temporarily banned in Europe. It will not approve new types of uses of the pesticides until more study is done, if then, the report said.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">"They are not taking bold enough action; there's a recognition that there is a crisis," said Lori Ann Burd, environmental health director for the advocacy group Center for Biological Diversity. She said the&nbsp;bees&nbsp;cannot wait, comparing more studies on neonicotinoids to going to a second and third mechanic when you've been told the brakes are shot.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">The report talks of a fine line between the need for pesticides to help agriculture and the harm they can do tobees&nbsp;and other pollinators.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">Lessening "the effects of pesticides on&nbsp;bees&nbsp;is a priority for the federal government, as both&nbsp;bee&nbsp;pollination and insect control are essential to the success of agriculture," the report said.</span></p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-top-export-and-import-in-every-us-state-2015-5#ixzz3aaV1o9UH" >The top export and import in every US state </a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-government-is-trying-to-save-the-declining-honeybee-population-2015-5#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/students-compete-robotics-worldwide-championship-science-2015-5">This robot competition inspired students and will get you excited about the future</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/r-us-honeybee-losses-soar-over-last-year-usda-report-finds-2015-5A key to America's crops is disappearing at a staggering ratehttp://www.businessinsider.com/r-us-honeybee-losses-soar-over-last-year-usda-report-finds-2015-5
Wed, 13 May 2015 10:10:00 -0400Carey Gillam
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/55534e805afbd3554e8b4567-450-300/us-honeybee-losses-soar-over-last-year-usda-report-finds.jpg" border="0" alt="Beekeepers use a bee smoker to calm bee colonies before transferring them to another crop after pollinating a blueberry field near Columbia Falls, Maine June 23, 2014. REUTERS/Adrees Latif "></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">(Reuters) - Honey bees, critical agents in the pollination of key U.S. crops, disappeared at a staggering rate over the last year, according to a new government report that comes as regulators, environmentalists and agribusinesses try to reverse the losses.</span></p>
<p>Losses of managed honey bee colonies hit 42.1 percent from April 2014 through April 2015, up from 34.2 percent for 2013-2014, and the second-highest annual loss seen, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in a report issued on Wednesday.</p>
<p>"Such high colony losses in the summer and year-round remain very troubling," Jeff Pettis, a USDA senior entomologist, said in a statement.</p>
<p>The 2014-15 yearly loss was down slightly from the 45 percent annual loss for 2012-2013 but well above the prior two years of annual measurements and above the benchmark of 18.7 percent that is considered economically unsustainable, USDA said.</p>
<p>Millions of honey bees are relied on to pollinate plants that produce a quarter of the food consumed by Americans. Beekeepers travel the country with managed hives to help the process.</p>
<p>But over the past few years, bee populations have been dying at a rate the U.S. government says must be addressed, and finding an answer has become a politically charged debate.</p>
<p>Beekeepers, environmental groups and some scientists blame a class of insecticide known as neonicotinoids, or neonics, used on crops such as corn as well as on plants used in lawns and gardens.</p>
<p>But Bayer, Syngenta and other agrichemical companies that sell neonic products say many factors such as mite infestations are harming the bees.</p>
<p>The White House has formed a task force to study the issue, and some lawn and garden retailers have been cutting use of neonics.</p>
<p><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/555355baeab8eaa568fda37e-1200-858/167525023.jpg" border="0" alt="167525023"></p>
<p>The Environmental Protection Agency is requiring a series of studies on neonic effects on bees and plans to issue the first of a series of assessments later this year.</p>
<p>The USDA report issued on Wednesday said colony losses were 23.1 percent for the 2014-15 winter months, typically the higher loss period. The 2014 summer loss of 27.4 percent marked the first time summer losses exceeded winter, and marked a surge from the 2013 summer loss of 19.8 percent, USDA said.</p>
<p>The results are considered preliminary and are based on survey responses from about 6,100 beekeepers managing 400,000 colonies, USDA said. Those beekeepers represent nearly 15.5 percent of 2.74 million U.S. bee colonies. A more detailed report is to be published later this year, USDA said.</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/bees-may-neonicotinoids-some-may-be-harmed" >A popular pesticide seems to be harming wild bees</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/r-us-honeybee-losses-soar-over-last-year-usda-report-finds-2015-5#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/beer-fermentation-time-lapse-2014-12">Watch This Mesmerizing Time-Lapse Of 12,400 Gallons Of Beer Fermenting Over 6 Days</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/a-popular-pesticide-is-harming-wild-bees-2015-4A popular pesticide seems to be harming wild beeshttp://www.businessinsider.com/a-popular-pesticide-is-harming-wild-bees-2015-4
Fri, 24 Apr 2015 16:38:00 -0400Susan Milius
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/55258dafecad044d1991955f-768-1024/5216608087_14ed7e57f4_b.jpg" border="0" alt="bees"></p><p>Bees don’t have the mouthpart sensitivity to taste — and thus can’t avoid — nectar tainted with neonicotinoid pesticides, new lab tests indicate.</p>
<p>And the charm of nicotine may even seduce bees into favoring pesticide-spiked nectar.</p>
<p>Outdoor tests also show that neonicotinoid exposure for some wild bees can be worrisome, a second paper reports.</p>
<p>Together, the studies renew questions about the widespread use of these pesticides on crops.</p>
<p>In the mouthpart tests, taste nerves in honeybees and buff-tailed bumblebees failed to show any jolt of reaction to three widely used neonicotinoid pesticides, says Geraldine Wright of Newcastle University in England. &nbsp;</p>
<p>“I don’t think they can taste it all,” she says.</p>
<p>Bees buzzing among the floral riches outside laboratories would therefore not be able to avoid neonicotinoid-tainted nectar, she and her colleagues&nbsp;<a href="http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/nature14414" target="_blank">argue</a>&nbsp;online April 22 in&nbsp;<em>Nature</em>.</p>
<p>Even though bees don’t taste the pesticides, something about their nicotine-related chemistry may bias bees to keep returning to the location of the spiked nectar, Wright suggests.</p>
<p>Offered a choice in the lab, both honeybees and bumblebees sipped more of the sugar water with a touch of a neonicotinoid pesticide in it than the plain sugar water.</p>
<p>Worries about what neonicotinoids do to pollinators reached such a peak in 2013 that the European Union banned use of those pesticides for two years, calling for more research. Studies have reported that exposure can impair bees’ skills at bringing home pollen and nectar, dimming their ability to navigate a landscape, for example. Debate has broken out over how lab studies apply to bees that can pick and choose flowers outdoors and how to interpret the results from field studies in complex landscapes.</p>
<p>In a new outdoor study, also&nbsp;<a href="http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/nature14420" target="_blank">reported</a>&nbsp;April 22 in&nbsp;<em>Nature,</em>&nbsp;researchers paired eight fields in Sweden planted with rape seeds coated by pesticides including the neonicotinoid clothianidin with comparable fields sprouting untreated seeds.</p>
<p>Honeybee colonies allowed to forage over treated fields increased in collective weight as well as those working the untreated ones. Yet bumblebee colonies foraging in the treated fields failed to grow, report Maj Rundlöf of Lund University in Sweden and colleagues. And&nbsp;<em>Osmia bicornis</em>bees, a wild species that doesn’t live in colonies, nested at six of the eight untreated sites but at none of the treated ones.</p>
<p>“At this point, it is no longer credible to argue that agricultural use of neonicotinoids does not harm wild bees,” says Dave Goulson of the University of Sussex in England, who has studied bumblebees but was not involved in the new test.</p>
<p>Honeybees have been the main species tested for harmful effects of pesticides, Rundlöf says. Yet their reactions may not reflect what happens to other pollinators. Also, she points out, her experiment couldn’t detect changes of less than about 20 percent in honeybee colony growth. So she urges caution in assuming that the pesticides had no effect on the honeybees.</p><p><strong>UP NEXT:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/produce-with-most-pesticides-2014-5" >Here Are The 10 Foods Most Likely To Be Covered In Pesticides</a></strong></p>
<p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/harvard-study-links-pesticides-to-colony-collapse-disorder-2014-5" >Scientists May Have Finally Pinpointed What's Killing All The Honeybees</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/a-popular-pesticide-is-harming-wild-bees-2015-4#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/drones-will-revolutionize-farming-2014-9">The Drone Revolution Is Coming To America's 2 Million Farms</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/tractor-trailer-carrying-millions-of-honeybees-overturns-seattle-2015-4Wild photos of a tractor-trailer carrying millions of bees that crashed in Seattlehttp://www.businessinsider.com/tractor-trailer-carrying-millions-of-honeybees-overturns-seattle-2015-4
Wed, 22 Apr 2015 14:18:12 -0400
<p><span style="color: #000000;">A tractor-trailer carrying&nbsp;millions&nbsp;of honeybees overturned on a&nbsp;highway&nbsp;north of Seattle early Friday, scattering hives and sending white-suited beekeepers scrambling to save as many insects as they could.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">The&nbsp;truck&nbsp;had just merged onto Interstate 5 around 3:30 a.m. when it&nbsp;tipped&nbsp;on its side, dumping its load of 448 hives, or about 13.7&nbsp;million&nbsp;bees, Washington State Patrol Trooper Travis Shearer said. The driver, a 36-year-old man from Idaho, was not hurt.</span><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/553529cceab8ea2f138b4567-800-/honeybees-seattle-4.jpg" border="0" alt="Honeybees Seattle" width="800" style="color: #000000;"></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">The company that owns the insects, Belleville Honey and Beekeeping Supply of Burlington, sent beekeepers to recover as many as possible, and&nbsp;bees&nbsp;covered their protective suits as they worked.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">The&nbsp;bees&nbsp;became more active as the sun rose and the weather warmed, and firefighters had to spray a layer of foam on some of the boxes, killing the insects for safety.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;"><img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/553529ef6da811c8458b4567-1200-600/honeybees-seattle-5.jpg" border="0" alt="Honeybees Seattle"><br></span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">Many of the hives were still along the&nbsp;highway&nbsp;more than seven hours after the accident, when a front-end loader began scooping them up and dumping them into a dump&nbsp;truck,&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Shearer said. The majority of the hives had been crushed.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">The&nbsp;bees&nbsp;were being transported from Sunnyside, in central Washington, to a blueberry farm in Lynden, a city near the Canadian border about 100 miles north of Seattle, Shearer said. Their job: pollinating crops.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">First responders and reporters alike swatted at the&nbsp;bees&nbsp;as they tried to do their jobs.</span><img src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/55352a0aeab8eabb0b8b4569-1200-600/honeybees-seattle-6.jpg" border="0" alt="Honeybees Seattle" style="color: #000000;"></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">"I think everybody there got stung," Shearer said.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">Seattle television station KIRO posted a video compilation of its on-scene reporter swatting the insects as he reported on the accident.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">Shearer urged drivers to keep their windows up and to "#beesafe when traveling through that area," as he wrote on Twitter.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">Company owner Eric Thompson told The Seattle Times the beekeepers he sent recovered 128 hives before the sun came up but he said the damage would be hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment and future profit. Everything was insured, he said.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">"I'm disappointed we caused such chaos and confusion," he added.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;"><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/55352a1decad04e8278b4567-1200-600/honeybees-seattle-7.jpg" border="0" alt="Honeybees Seattle"><br></span></p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/r-mini-army-drones-developed-2015-3" >Polish firm develops deadly 'Bee' drones</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/tractor-trailer-carrying-millions-of-honeybees-overturns-seattle-2015-4#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/gary-shilling-honey-holiday-present-2014-12">Here's Why Anybody Who Is Somebody In Finance Is Getting This Bottle Of Honey From Gary Shilling</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/this-beehive-design-has-raised-8-million-from-crowdfunding-in-two-months-2015-4This amazing new beehive design has now raised £8 million from crowdfunding in just two monthshttp://www.businessinsider.com/this-beehive-design-has-raised-8-million-from-crowdfunding-in-two-months-2015-4
Mon, 20 Apr 2015 11:27:54 -0400Simon Thomsen
<p>When inventors Cedar Anderson and his father Stuart released their radical new design for a beehive on the crowdfunding platform Indiegogo in late February, they were hoping to raise $US70,000. When the campaign closes tonight, eight weeks later, it looks set to top a staggering $US12 million (£7.7 million).</p>
<p><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/55351b13dd0895ae6c8b457d-960-616/10994179_711445858953648_6644532818477475701_n.jpg" border="0" alt="beehive"></p>
<p>The pair, from the hippie-tinged rainforest hinterland of Byron Bay on the NSW far north coast, spent more than a decade creating a brilliantly simple, yet game-changing system that allows beekeepers to harvest honey on tap, without disturbing the hive. The plastic honeycomb cells are cracked opened with a lever so honey drains down and out before the cells are reset, ready to be refilled. The method also saves hours of time and effort for beekeepers.</p>
<p>The global reaction has been astonishing, with more than 35,000 people investing in the FFlow Hive project, including 7000 buying the now sold out $US600 full beehive. Within three hours, they’d raised $US1 million. The project has become Indiegogo’s biggest ever crowdfunding project.</p>
<p>It’s been a busy month for Cedar, 34, a third generation beekeeper who became a father for the first time last month. He wasn’t expecting to have a son and did not have a name picked out, but resisted the temptation to call him Buzz.</p>
<p>Cedar Anderson says the last two months have seen their wildest hopes and dreams come true.</p>
<p><img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/55351b13dd0895ae6c8b457e-960-533/10406882_709837282447839_2294838647085752880_n.jpg" border="0" alt="Beehive"></p>
<p>“We are humbled by the amazing community that has grown so quickly around our invention,” he said.</p>
<p>“Our vision of a worldwide community of beekeepers using our invention and united by a love of bees and a deeper appreciation of the natural world is no longer just an idea.”</p>
<p>He estimates that around 50% of the people investing in the Flow Hive are new to the hobby.</p>
<p>“We think beekeeping fosters a deeper appreciation of the interconnected matrix of life we are all a part of,” Cedar said</p>
<p>The pressure is now on the pair to complete the orders, which are being built in Brisbane, and ship them worldwide. Production is now expected to continue through to 2016 and the Andersons are also working on building an online beekeeping community around the owners of Flow Hives.</p>
<p>Once the crowdfunding production is complete, they plan to offer the Flow Hive for general sale.</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/this-beehive-design-has-raised-8-million-from-crowdfunding-in-two-months-2015-4#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-wizard-of-oz-american-economy-meaning-2015-4">Here's the real, forgotten meaning of 'The Wizard Of Oz' </a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/watch-obama-try-to-calm-down-children-during-bee-attack-2015-4Watch Obama try to calm down screaming children during bee bombardmenthttp://www.businessinsider.com/watch-obama-try-to-calm-down-children-during-bee-attack-2015-4
Mon, 06 Apr 2015 16:38:25 -0400Colin Campbell
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/5522e97a6da8117d72a06e4d-600-/barack-obama-bees.png" border="0" alt="barack obama bees" width="600"></p><p>President Barack Obama's Easter celebration on Monday was spoiled by a swarm of bees. </p>
<p>According <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/obama-bee-attack-easter-children-screaming-116704.html#ixzz3WYeXzyBU">to Politico</a>, a bee attack hit while Obama started reading <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Where-Wild-Things-Maurice-Sendak/dp/0064431789">"Where the Wild Things Are"</a> to children during the annual Easter Egg Roll event.</p>
<p class="p1">"They sting. They're scary!" the children shrieked. "Ahhhhhhhhhh!" </p>
<p class="p1">Obama, smiling, tried to console them. </p>
<p class="p1">"Oh no, it's the bees!" he joked. "It's okay guys, bees are good. They won't harm nothing. They won't sting you."</p>
<p class="p1">The children's screams continued. Obama suggested the book he was reading to them should inspire courage.</p>
<p class="p1">"Hold on! Hold on! You guys are Wild Things, you're not supposed to be scared of bees when you're a Wild Thing!" he told them.</p>
<p class="p1">Watch the incident below via ABC News:</p>
<p class="p1"><iframe width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/H9x3x26jIns"></iframe></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/watch-obama-try-to-calm-down-children-during-bee-attack-2015-4#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/drunk-driving-checkpoint-regulation-hack-2015-2">A lawyer in Florida has come up with an ingenious way for drivers to evade drunken-driving checkpoints</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/honey-flow-raised-52-million-on-indiegogo-2015-3This ingeniously redesigned beehive is one of the world’s biggest crowdfunding successhttp://www.businessinsider.com/honey-flow-raised-52-million-on-indiegogo-2015-3
Mon, 09 Mar 2015 08:59:24 -0400Simon Thomsen
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/54eb17a6dd0895c4198b45da-1200-924/honey-flow-live-1.jpg" border="0" alt="Honey flow live"></p><p>Australian inventors Stuart and Cedar Anderson have redesigned the beehive.</p>
<p>In February the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com.au/crowdfunding-investors-went-nuts-for-this-gamechanging-australian-invention-a-beehive-with-a-honey-tap-2015-2">Andersons launched a revolutionary beehive system</a>&nbsp;that lets you to harvest honey on tap without disturbing the hive, on the crowdfunding platform Indiegogo. The father and son team wanted $70,000 (£46,000). It took just less than eight minutes for to reach their target.</p>
<p>Within three hours they had $1 million (£660,000) in pledges and pre-sales. Just a day later, it was $2.18 million (£1.44 million) and set a record for the most funds raised in a day.</p>
<p>More than 92,000 people have pledged support, raising an average of $53,000 (£35,000) per hour, with more than 10,000 products ordered.</p>
<p>With a month to go, they’ve now raised more than $5 million (£3.3 million) in the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com.au/www.indiegogo.com/projects/flow-hive-honey-on-tap-directly-from-your-beehive">most successful crowdfunding venture outside the US,</a>&nbsp;with investors in 116 countries. The US is the key market, justifying their decision to launch in US dollars, followed by investors in Australia, Canada and the UK.</p>
<p>Someone in the Ukraine offered $1. There was $2 each from Estonia and Serbia and $5 from Rwanda.</p>
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/54fd9940dd08954c608b456c-1129-846/aus-beehive-screengrab.jpg" border="0" alt="Aus Beehive Screengrab">The duo, who live near Byron Bay on the New South Wales north coast, are both thrilled and a little shocked by the response.</p>
<p>“It’s been overwhelming,” said Cedar, 34, a third generation beekeeper who’s been looking after hives since he was six.</p>
<p>“You never know what will happen when you put a new idea up. Experts had told me that our idea wouldn’t work for online crowdfunding, but I’m very pleased to see that they were very wrong.”</p>
<p>The pair worked on designs for a decade before Cedar came up with the idea for honeycomb cells that could be cracked opened with a lever so honey drains down and out before the lever is turned back and the cells are reset, ready to be refilled. The method also saves hours of time and effort for beekeepers.</p>
<p>“I just woke up one morning and suddenly had the realisation it didn’t have to be honeycomb cells anymore, that the shape could change from being hexagon cells to channels,” Cedar said.</p>
<p>“I had come up with a more complex design that split the comb horizontally. But dad had a couple of coffees and came up with the idea to split it vertically.”</p>
<p>Stuart Anderson, 60, said he wanted to make things less stressful for the bees and easier on the beekeeper.</p>
<p>“Traditional extraction of honey is very time consuming and sometimes backyard beekeepers neglect to harvest their honey because they just don’t have the time for all the work involved,” Stuart said.</p>
<p>He hopes that their system, called the Flow Hive, will attract more amateur beekeepers to the try their hand at keeping bees.</p>
<p>They&nbsp;<a href="https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/flow-hive-honey-on-tap-directly-from-your-beehive">remain on sale until April</a>, priced between $230 and $600.</p>
<p>Here’s how it works.</p>
<p><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/54fd9940dd08954c608b456b-700-1789/aus%20beehive%20graph.jpg" border="0" alt="Aus Beehive Graph" width="800"></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/honey-flow-raised-52-million-on-indiegogo-2015-3#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/samsung-dream-doghouse-dog-high-tech-2015-3">Samsung has designed a $39,000 high-tech doghouse with a treadmill and hot tub</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/gary-shilling-honey-holiday-present-2014-12Here's Why Anybody Who Is Somebody In Finance Is Getting This Bottle Of Honey From Gary Shillinghttp://www.businessinsider.com/gary-shilling-honey-holiday-present-2014-12
Wed, 10 Dec 2014 18:24:00 -0500Kamelia Angelova
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Every holiday season in December, legendary economist Gary Shilling mails a bottle of fresh honey to a selected group of people who work in finance.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Shilling is</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&nbsp;a recreational beekeeper and has an apiary in the back yard of his New Jersey home. He has sent clients, colleagues, friends and experts in finance he likes a honey bottle for years. (Our deputy editor <a href="https://twitter.com/bySamRo/status/542763424900714497">Sam Ro just got one</a>&nbsp;in the mail.)</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">We visited Shilling's home a couple of years ago and he told us all about the challenges and benefits of beekeeping.</span></p>
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5em;">Produced by Kamelia Angelova &amp; Robert Libetti</em></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/gary-shilling-honey-holiday-present-2014-12#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/one-star-review-for-bee-sting-2014-11This App Got A One-Star Review Because The Person Was Stung By A Bee While Using Ithttp://www.businessinsider.com/one-star-review-for-bee-sting-2014-11
Sun, 16 Nov 2014 14:06:00 -0500Brad Reed
<p><span><img style="float:right;" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/5468bba06da811c007be7dbe-600-/yellow-jacket-4.jpg" border="0" alt="yellow jacket" width="600">No matter how good your mobile app is, there will always be at least one person who will trash it with a one-star rating on the </span><a href="http://bgr.com/tag/app-store">App Store</a><span>, just because some people can’t help hating on things. </span></p>
<p><span>App developer Todd Ransom, who has </span><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/waterfalls-western-north-carolina/id383953193?mt=8" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">developed an app</a> <span>that maps out the areas surrounding the gorgeous waterfalls of western North Carolina, </span><a href="https://twitter.com/avenir/status/533056913013891072" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">explains on Twitter</a><span> that his app has gotten a one-star review for the most ridiculous possible reason: The reviewer got stung by yellow jackets while using the app.</span></p>
<div><div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
<p>
<a href="https://twitter.com/amahnke">@amahnke</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/iA">@iA</a> I got a 1 star review because someone was stung by a bee while using my app. <a href="http://t.co/3CRHzx2Hng">pic.twitter.com/3CRHzx2Hng</a> </p>— Todd Ransom (@avenir) <a href="https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/533056913013891072">November 14, 2014</a>
</blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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<p class="embed-spacer"></p>
<p>“Is there any way to post a warning about a trail or fall?” the reviewer wrote. “Today we tried to hike up to Hickey Fork Falls and ran into a huge yellow jacket ground nest. It’s on the left side of trail right after you cross over a little stream using the moss covered hewed log. Nest is 25-30ft after log crossing. We both got stung multiple times, including our dog. Do not hike this trail!”</p>
<div class="text-column">
<p>We have no doubt that Ransom took a lot of time mapping out all of the details in these areas in North Carolina, though we think it’s a tad unfair to expect him to know where every single bees’ nest is along the trail. We look forward to the next person who gives his app a one-star review because they tripped over a rock that the app failed to warn them about.</p>
</div>
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<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/one-star-review-for-bee-sting-2014-11#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/r-more-than-20-children-attacked-by-bees-at-texas-school-2014-10More Than 20 Children Attacked By Bees At Texas School http://www.businessinsider.com/r-more-than-20-children-attacked-by-bees-at-texas-school-2014-10
Wed, 22 Oct 2014 09:49:00 -0400
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/5447b46e6bb3f71d682fe30a-887-665/killer-bees-7.jpg" border="0" alt="Killer bees"></p><p>AUSTIN Texas (Reuters) - A swarm of bees attacked two dozen children at a school near Fort Worth, Texas, on Tuesday after a student appeared to rattle a nest during a gym-class soccer game, a school spokeswoman said,</p>
<p>Four of the children, who are in sixth grade, were taken to the hospital. There was no immediate information on their condition.</p>
<p>The nest was in an underground irrigation box at Highland Middle School in Saginaw, said Kristin Courtney, a spokeswoman for the Eagle Mountain-Saginaw Independent School District.</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/r-more-than-20-children-attacked-by-bees-at-texas-school-2014-10#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/japanese-giant-hornet-cooked-by-honeybees-2014-10These Bees Protect Their Nest From Giant Hornets By Cooking Them Alivehttp://www.businessinsider.com/japanese-giant-hornet-cooked-by-honeybees-2014-10
Mon, 20 Oct 2014 10:32:00 -0400Kristy Hamilton
<p><img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/5445152b6da811835c81f504-1200-858/9642364868_8c562c19a0_o.jpg" border="0" alt="Japanese giant hornet"></p><p></p>
<p>A single <a href="http://www.natgeotv.com/uk/nature-uncut/videos/attack-of-the-japanese-giant-hornets">Japanese giant hornet</a> (<em>Vespa mandarinia japonica</em>) can kill forty honeybees a minute. A small group of them can decimate an entire bee colony. The hornet's scissor-like teeth can wreak havoc on their prey so swiftly that Japanese honeybees had to adapt to survive.</p>
<p><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/5445145decad04735f7efb7b/killer honeybees.gif" border="0" alt="killer honeybees"></p>
<p>Instead of stinging the intruder, the honeybees <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120314172306.htm">swarm the hornet</a> and begin vibrating, raising their collective temperature to 117 degrees Fahrenheit (47.2 ºC) and turning their crush of bodies into somewhat of a convection oven.</p>
<p>While the honeybees can tolerate temperatures of 118 degrees Fahrenheit (47.8 ºC), Japanese giant hornets can only tolerate 115 degrees (46.1 ºC).</p>
<p><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/544513836da8112c5481f504/honeybee.gif" border="0" alt="honeybee"></p>
<p>Watch the honeybees save their colony in a three minute video below.</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/japanese-giant-hornet-cooked-by-honeybees-2014-10#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p>